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Category: Mentors/Guest Artists

COVID-19: Festival Roundtable

  • April 21, 2020
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Festival · Mentors/Guest Artists · News · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

OHIO’s 2020 MFA Playwriting
Artistic Roundtable Series

As of April 14, 2020

For the past twenty-five years, the School of Theater at Ohio University has hosted the annual Seabury Quinn Jr. Playwrights Festival celebrating the plays written by the writers in the MFA playwriting program and featuring one-on-one mentorship for our students by nationally recognized playwrights and other leaders in new play development. The recent pandemic has forced us, as well as other theaters and universities around the country, to cancel these plans and explore new ways to give our writers a culminating experience with outside mentors in recognition of their work over the past year. Here’s more about our approach and the schedule of events.

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2019 Festival Information

  • April 25, 2019
  • by Erik Ramsey
  • · Festival · Mentors/Guest Artists · News · Seabury Quinn, Jr.

25th Annual Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival

Production Schedule and Mentor Bios


Featured Thesis Productions

Tickets for the Featured Productions are $5 general admission or FREE for OU Students (with valid student ID) through Arts for Ohio; available at the Templeton–Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium box office. 

Sunny Days

by Katherine Varga, directed by Olivia Rocco
8:00 p.m. – April 20th, 24th & 25th, Elizabeth Evans Baker Theater Stage, Kantner Hall

Life is looking sunny for 17-year-old Carly—well, except for the fights with her mom. Her BFF Mike E and his cool mom just moved in with them. The fandom website she made for her celebrity crush is blowing up. And the mysterious fan she’s been talking to online just might be the object of her affections. The one catch – her crush is a serial killer, and his murders are getting closer to her home. Sunny Days explores the gap between our online and offline selves, the cultural effects of toxic masculinity, and how far women will go to save the people they love.

Sibyl

by Trip Venturella, directed by Alan Patrick Kenny
8:00 p.m. – April 18th & 26th, Elizabeth Evans Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
2:00 p.m. – April 27th, Elizabeth Evans Baker Theater Stage, Kantner Hall

Two weeks ago, Sibyl, the love of Les’ life, disappeared, and today Les’ job is to interrogate the last person to have seen her alive. Lucky, Les has a Hepatoscope, a device that allows him to plumb the depths of another person’s mind. But minds are tricky places, and, as Les begins to discover, what we call reality can be trickier still. Sibyl is a dark comedy that blurs the lines between memory, fantasy, and truth.

Stitched with a Sickle and a Hammer

by Inna Tsyrlin, directed by Anne McAlexander
8:00 p.m. – April 19th & 27th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
2:00 p.m. – April 20th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall

Aleksandra, a political prisoner at a GULAG camp and part of the camp’s theatre troupe, is forced to aid Soviet authorities disguise the existence of the camp in front of a visiting American delegation. She prepares for two roles: the character on stage – Nina from Chekhov’s The Seagull – and the role of an actor who isn’t imprisoned. In the face of totalitarian power, inside and outside the camp, Aleksandra must decide whether to comply with the regime that has taken away her freedom or commit an act of counterrevolution.


STAGED READINGS

Staged readings are free and open to the public.

Bury the Rest

by Skye Robinson Hillis, directed by Rebecca Vernoy
1:00 p.m. – Thursday, April 25th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

Following the death of their 17-year-old daughter Lucy in a mass high school shooting, friendly exes Margot and Colin find themselves at a moral impasse. Though deeply reliant on each other during the grieving process, Colin’s position as a Republican U.S. Senator makes it difficult for Margot and the rest of the family to reconcile the root of their grief with his continued support of the NRA. As they navigate the intimacies of their reforged relationship and rebuild themselves as a family, it may in fact be Lucy who decides their fate.

Here Lies Vivienne Greene

by Liv Matthews, directed by Jeanette L. Buck
4:00 p.m. – Thursday, April 25th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

In 1956, recently certified mortician Vivienne Greene is next in line to inherit the Jackson and Sons Funeral Home from her Uncle Zeke. Before she can take over, Vivienne is presented with one more test mortuary school never prepared her for: after a young boy is brutally attacked, Vivienne must smuggle him out of their small Georgia town before he is found by a local mob. Fearful of losing the funeral home and her own life, Vivienne must look to her past to find that death may be a second chance at life.

The Intermission

by Devin Porter
1:30 p.m. – Friday, April 26th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

What does it mean to be mute? When an African American teenager, Rocky Carter, protects the only thing God has left for him, he goes from almost graduating high school to Dunbar, a super-max. On his birthday, with the help of St. Peter, the oldest security guard in Dunbar, Rocky must earn his birthday present in order to see the love of his life again. Through the process of listening and taking action, Rocky learns that being mute doesn’t mean you’re silent.

The Evolution of Rattlesnakes

by Jean Egdorf, directed by Dusty Brown
3:30 p.m. – Friday, April 26th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

Rattlesnakes are evolving to lose their rattles. Man has spent so long wiping out the ones that make noise, it’s become a better defense mechanism to remain silent. Denni Erwine is arrested for the murder of the Drybrook County Sheriff. According to their statements, she only struck back against the Sheriff in defense of her neighbor, Louisa Trelawney, but there is more coiled up in the case than either woman is willing to say. To prevent it from striking more than once, is there only one way to deal with a venomous snake?

The Christmas Special

by John Hendel
1:00 p.m. – Saturday, April 27th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the cabin,
Barbara was asking, “What exactly will happen?”
Her husband was giving his life up to Claus,
But Barbara was left there without any cause
Then what in her is’lated world did appear?
The son she gave up in a moment of fear!
He’s handsome and famous, and possibly could
Whisk Babs away to old Hollywood
But hubby is slavish to the plan that they made,
“You must be devoted to Santa’s crusade!”
Will Barbara decide that her son’s the solution
Or will she stay true to the revolution?

To Saints and Stars

by Jordan Ramirez Puckett, directed by Shelley Delaney
4:00 p.m. – Saturday April 27th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

10-all astronauts prepare for launch… 9-months and Zoe will be a mother… 8-years old, a promise we never wanted to break… 7-months, my one way ticket to Mars… 6-million hours staring up at the stars… 5-seconds left until launch… 4- years old when we first met… 3- decades of friendship and love… 2-peas in a pod until… 1-mission liftoff

In To Saints and Stars, Sofía’s life flashes before her eyes. In the face of almost certain death on the first manned mission to Mars, Sofía re-examines her lifelong friendship with Zoe and the age old conflict between science and faith.


Guest Artists In Residence

Each April, three nationally recognized, industry professional guest artists are invited to be in residence for the Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival to respond to the MFA plays and work with the MFA playwrights.

We are pleased to announce the guest artists joining us for the 2019 Seabury Quinn, Jr. Playwrights’ Festival:

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Nan Barnett is a new play developer, producer, and advocate, and is the Executive Director of National New Play Network, an alliance of more than 120 professional theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays and model a robust, equitable, and inclusive new play ecosystem. During her previous tenures as a member of the Network’s Board, Executive Committee, and President she helped create and implement several of the organization’s revolutionary initiatives, including the acclaimed NNPN Rolling World Premiere, Residency, and National Directors Fellows programs, Nan has led the organization through the development and launch of its field-altering database, the New Play Exchange, now home to more than 25,000 plays by living writers, and its recent planning process which will dramatically evolve its governance structure to accelerate its diversification. Prior to joining NNPN full-time Nan was a founding company member and the long-time Managing Director of Florida Stage, the nation’s largest regional theater producing exclusively new and developing plays and musicals, where during 24 seasons she oversaw the development and production of hundreds of new plays and musicals for both emerging and veteran playwrights. She was a member of DC’s inaugural Helen Hayes Awards’ New Play Panel is on the Artistic Councils of O’Neill Theater Center and PlayPenn and was inducted into the National Theatre Conference in 2017. Nan was also the Coordinating Producer for the 2015 and 2018 iterations of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival in the nation’s capital region, where NNPN is based.

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Martine Kei Green-Rogers is an Assistant Professor at SUNY: New Paltz, a freelance dramaturg, and the President of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. Her dramaturgical credits include: The Greatest with the Louisville Orchestra, Fences and One Man, Two Guvnors at Pioneer Theatre Company; Clearing Bombs and Nothing Personal at Plan-B Theatre; the Classical Theatre Company’s productions of Uncle Vanya, Antigone, Candida, Ghosts, Tartuffe, and Shylock, The Jew of Venice; Sweat at the Goodman; productions of Radio Golf, Five Guys Named Moe, Blues for An Alabama Sky, Gem of the Ocean, Waiting for Godot, Iphigenia at Aulis, Seven Guitars, The Mountaintop, Home, and Porgy and Bess at the Court Theatre; The Clean House at CATCO; Hairspray, The Book of Will, Shakespeare in Love, UniSon, Hannah and the Dread Gazebo, Comedy of Errors, To Kill A Mockingbird, The African Company Presents Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and Fences at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; 10 Perfect and The Curious Walk of the Salamander as part of the 2006 and 2007 Madison Repertory Theatre’s New Play Festival; and A Thousand Words as part of the 2008 WI Wrights New Play Festival. She also works with the Great Plains Theatre Conference and is affiliated with NNPN.

Jacqueline Lawton 13, Photo by Jason HornickJacqueline E. Lawton is a playwright, dramaturg, producer, and advocate for Access, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the American Theatre. Her plays include: Among These Wild Things, Anna K; Blackbirds, Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; Deep Belly Beautiful; The Devil’s Sweet Water; The Hampton Years; The Inferior Sex, Intelligence; Love Brothers Serenade; Mad Breed; and Noms de Guerre. Lawton has worked as a dramaturg and research consultant at Active Cultures, Actors Theatre of Louisville – Humana Festival of New American Plays, the Arden Theater (Philadelphia, PA), Arena Stage, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Discovery Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater (New York, NY) Folger Shakespeare Library, the Ford’s Theatre, Horizons Theater (Atlanta, GA), Howard University, the Hub Theatre, Interact Theatre (Philadelphia, PA), Kennedy Center VSA Program, Morgan State University, Redshift Productions (New York, NY), Rorschach Theater Company, Round House Theatre, Theater Alliance, Theater of the First Amendment, Theater J, Tribute Productions, University of Maryland, Virginia Stage Company, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Currently, she is a Dramaturg at PlayMakers Repertory. Ms. Lawton received her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient and an alum of National New Play Network (NNPN) Playwright Alum, Arena Stage’s Playwrights’ Arena, and Center Stage’s Playwrights Collective. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company. She is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild of America and is their NC Regional Rep.

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2018 Festival Info!

  • April 5, 2018
  • by ouplaywrights
  • · Beth Blickers · Deborah Brevoort · Doug Wright · Events · Festival · News

Production Schedule and Mentor Bios


Featured Thesis Productions

Tickets for the Featured Productions are $5 general admission or FREE for OU Students (with valid student ID) through Arts for Ohio; available at the Templeton–Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium box office. 

The Defiance of Dandelions

by Philana Imade Omorotionmwan, directed by Jeanette L. Buck
8:00 pm – April 19th, 21st & 27th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall

Do not speak too loudly or too little or too much.
Do not get out of the place you’ve been assigned.
Do not give birth to a meadow of dandelions.

For as long as they can remember, The Strongness, The Queerness, The Boisterousness, The Brazenness, The Thickness, and The Softness have been trapped in the In-School Shading Room. While they wait for a release that seems like it may never come, a bouquet is born and they begin to remember the selves and the world that they forgot.

La Mujer Barbuda

by Cristina Luzárraga, directed by Jonathan Helter
8:00 pm – April 20th, 25th & 28th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall

2 women. 4 breasts. 1 beard.
Maggie is an American airline pilot and new mother. When she tries to pump breast milk in the cockpit, she almost perishes in a plane crash––and that’s not even the worst of it.
Magdalena is a 17th century Italian weaver and new mother. When she suddenly grows a beard and nurses a baby at age fifty-two, she sets off a domestic and civil crisis––and that, too, is not even the worst of it.
La Mujer Barbuda explores the intersecting lives of two women, separated by time and space and united in the struggle to thrive as a mother in a man’s world.

Vessel

by Natasha Renee Smith, directed by Anne McAlexander
2:00 pm – April 21st & 28th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall
8:00 pm – April 26th, Elizabeth Baker Theater, Kantner Hall

Metronomes are controlled by magnets. Magnets are controlled by the Earth. The Earth is controlled by the sun. Who—or what—controls Tiana? The MIT sophomore enters into dual orbit with Luke, a professor of chaos theory. This darkly romantic play explores mental illness, power dynamics, and the poetry of visceral pain.


STAGED READINGS

Staged readings are free and open to the public.

How to Bake a Genoise Sponge without Breaking Any Eggs

by Jean Egdorf
1:00 pm, Thursday April 26th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

Hello, bakers! Thank you for joining me for this very special episode of Melissa B’s Genoise. Today we’re making the trickiest cake there is: the genoise sponge. I better be able to perfect this recipe if I’m going to make it studying pastry at Le Cordon Bleu! My mom and my therapist think I’ll crumble under the stress, but I’m sure with help of my friends, Ms. J and Sylvie, neither me or my cake will fall apart.

Exodus of Dreams

by Inna Tsyrlin
4:00 pm, Thursday April 26th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

Can a kosher child live with a non-kosher heart? While Avram struggles to integrate himself and his family into American society, and meets constant obstacles in keeping his faith, his daughter befriends a pig. This pig may be the answer to the family’s heart transplant predicament, but if Avram accepts a pig’s heart for his sick daughter, will he still be a good Jew?

She Moves in Her Own Way

by Liv Matthews
1:30 pm, Friday April 27th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

Three seconds on the clock. Rolling Hills Middle School is down by two. All eyes are on point guard Alex Williams. She dribbles, pliés, and shoots the ball. It pirouettes in the rim and Alex’s mind leaps across time to her coach and former Atlanta Hawks player Anthony Prince. As the athletes wait for the ball to land, Alex’s journey through basketball and dance begins a duet with Anthony’s distant rise to NBA stardom.

Cora

by Katherine Varga, directed by Olivia Rocco
4:00 pm, Friday April 27th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

A young photojournalist travels overseas to document war crimes. But first, she must agree to leave her heart behind. Fortunately, her news corporation has state-of-the-art technology to ensure the hearts are protected and thoroughly entertained. Cora explores how a digital culture that connects us to the world can separate us from ourselves.

A Driving Beat

by Jordan Ramirez Puckett
1:00 pm, Saturday April 28th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

2,000 miles, a cross-country car ride
adopted son and mother travel side by side
white woman, brown son in the same space
9 states to the hospital, the teen’s birthplace
4 days, if all goes according to plan
5 nights, of doing all that they can
to find his birth mom, identity, or home
but by the end of their journey
will any answers be known?

The Water Baby

by Trip Venturella, directed by Ernesto Ponce
4:00 pm, Saturday April 28th, Forum Theater, RTV Building

The year is 1930, and Theofanis Tombras has returned from his tour of duty in the Marines with an unnamed baby in tow. He finds a country bruised by economic crisis; Alexandra, his arranged fiancée, stranded across the ocean; and an unlikely opportunity offered by an old friend. As a better life beckons, it becomes clear to his young family that Theo will sacrifice nearly anything to sustain his growing ambition, and contain the specters of his past.


Guest Artists In Residence

Each April, three nationally recognized, industry professional guest artists are invited to be in residence for the Seabury Quinn Jr Playwrights Festival to respond to the MFA plays and work with the MFA playwrights.

We are pleased to announce the guest artists joining us for the 2018 Seabury Quinn Jr Playwrights Festival:

Deborah Brevoort ALT Gala

Deborah Brevoort is a playwright and librettist from Alaska who now lives in the New York City area. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, an original company member with Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre and a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders. She is best known for her play The Women of Lockerbie, which won the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays Award and the silver medal in the Onassis International Playwriting Competition. The play is produced all over the US and internationally. It is published by DPS and by No Passport Press in a volume with The Comfort Team. The Comfort Team, about military wives during the surge of Iraq, was written with a commission from the Virginia Stage Company, where it premiered in 2012. My Lord What a Night a one-act play about Marian Anderson and Albert Einstein, premiered in 2016 at Premiere Stages. She has since turned it into a full length play. The Blue-Sky Boys, a comedy about NASA’s Apollo program, was written with a commission from the EST/ Sloan Foundation. It was produced at the Barter Theatre and Capital Rep where it was the #1 critics pick for 2016. The Poetry of Pizza, a cross cultural comedy about love, was produced at Purple Rose Theatre,Virginia Stage, Mixed Blood Theatre, California Rep, Centenary Stage, and others. The Velvet Weapon, a back stage farce, won the national playwriting contest at Trustus Theatre. It is published with The Poetry of Pizza by No Passport Press. Blue Moon Over Memphis, her Noh Drama about Elvis Presley, is published by Applause Books in “The Best American Short Plays.” It is produced byTheatre Nohgaku who is touring it internationally. Into the Fire won the Weissberger Award.  Signs of Life won the Jane Chambers Award, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and the gold medal in the Pinter Review Prize for Drama. Both are published by Samuel French.

Deborah has also written the librettos, books and lyrics for numerous musicals and operas. She holds MFA’s in playwriting from Brown University and in musical theatre writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her website is: www.DeborahBrevoort.com.

Beth headshot Joey Stocks photo credit

Beth Blickers is currently an agent at APA, where she represents artists who work in theatre, opera, television and film. Before joining APA, she was an agent at Abrams Artists Agency, Helen Merrill Ltd. and the William Morris Agency, where she began work after graduating from New York University.

Beth has served on the jury panel for the Weissberger Award, the Ed Kleban Award, the Lark’s PONY Fellowship and Playwrights Week, participated in the Non-Traditional Casting Project, Inc.’s roundtable on inclusion and diversity in the theatre and has presented workshops and sessions on agenting, playwriting, directors and choreographers and related topics for organizations such as the Society of Directors and Choreographers Foundation, the Dramatists Guild, League of Professional Theatre Women, the Lark, New York University, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, the Texas Educational Theatre Association and the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

She is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc. where she served on the board for fifteen years; the President of Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas; and is the Board Chair Emeritus of Theatre Breaking Through Barriers, a New York company that works with artists with disabilities.

Doug Wright ONEDoug Wright was most recently represented on Broadway by the musical War Paint, which played at the Nederlander Theater.  His earlier plays include I Am My Own Wife (Tony Award, Pulitzer Prize), Posterity, and Quills (Obie Award), as well as books for the musicals Grey Gardens (Tony Nomination), The Little Mermaid and Hands on A Hardbody. (Drama Desk Nomination).   Films include the screen adaptation of Quills (Paul Selvin Award, WGA) and production rewrites for director Rob Marshall, Steven Spielberg and others.  Acting credits include two appearances on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and the films Little Manhattan and Two Lovers.   He is president of The Dramatists Guild and on the Board of The New York Theater Workshop.  He has received grants from United States Artists and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and is a graduate of Yale University (BA) and New York University (MFA).   He has been a frequent guest at Yaddo and the MacDowell Art Colonies, and has taught or guest lectured at the Yale Drama School, Princeton University, Julliard and NYU.  He lives in New York with his husband, singer-songwriter David Clement and cats Glynis and Murray.

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